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Friday, August 04, 2006

bye edna, bye art soldier

Edna and Art Soldier have quit. Those didn't last long. Blogging's hard! Hopefully Edna will still make appearances here and there. It must be especially frustrating if you are anonymous and never have a chance to talk about your own work and stuff.

I haven't seen much - if any - Tom Sanford for real since Japan, but I am more into it now than at first. Maybe he is better (broadened?), maybe my taste has changed, maybe a little of both? Kehinde Wiley, still don't like . There is a new one (2006, i think) at the museum - BAD. Sorry. Just a bad painting. What do others think? Has anybody here gone and seen it?

16 comments:

I saw the Wiley show last year in Dc and it blew. He doesn't even cover up his projection-trace lines. Much better looking in a mag or online than in person, whcih seems like perfect for today's art world.

Yeah, blogging is hard. It's even harder to be angry all the fucking time. It's taxing and eventually wears out all but the most calloused spirits. I should know.

There's a principle of physics (actually related to relativity) that says the longer something has been around, the longer it's likely to continue to be around--something to that effect. Conversely, something that just appeared yesterday is likely to fade tomorrow. If you can make the leap to generalize the paradigm, then lots of things fit under it: architecture, monuments, the history of nations and peoples.

I work part-time at the Walter McBean gallery in SF, and we just had an alumni show with an absolutely gigantic painting by Kehinde Wiley. To be honest, I wasn't that into it, felt like it was a bit of a one-liner, noticed some mistakes in craft - but man, the thing had a real presence. (The 10'x12' carved gold frame didn't hurt...)

Unfortunately, the last week of the show saw a fair amount of traffic, and someone walked out with a Paul Pfeiffer DVD. I was the only gallery sitter there that night, so I had to call the police.

Ok, so the police get there, and the very first thing they do when entering the gallery - even before they ask if they're in the right place - is look up at the Wiley painting and say, "Who are these guys? I think I just arrested about half of 'em."

I was floored. It was just so grossly inappropriate, and.. just sad. And in that instance, everything about that work was justified, and it became - in my eyes- the most important piece in the show.

Yes, w was write, I believe Kehinde cares more about image-making than painterly painting, but.. those images contain a real power, and it's a message that, unfortunately, still needs to be made. There are not enough positive images of black males, and the canonical history of painting contains an equally enormous void.

Maybe Kehinde doesn't cover up his projection-trace lines because he's making up for lost time..

thanks whitney, finally some kind of intelligent comments have come to anaba. "making up for lost time" i think you hit it on the head. vc, ending sentences with a verb doesn't get your point across it just makes you sound like you were going to say something. there is no veronese versus wiley, white italian dead for centuries versus young black living in bush's america. other cities have much better museums either way.

Compelling story from Whitney. I was suggesting Wiley was just rehearsing a clever formula, but I see now that the work does something important in the social field. And that need to depict positive images of black males is something to believe in.So the dangling verb finds a referent. Would anyone who said "you have to believe in ____" be taken seriously?

No prohibitions can be made against any comparisons, as long as we have some sense of the huge complexities. Anything can be compared. Doesn't Wiley argue this? I still don't like them.

"Image making," although presented by W as a negative, is a good characterization of some painting's ambition today: the thrusting of the image into the stream of images in order to exploit its possible meanings. This as opposed to making at least part of the subject out of how the image is constructed .

The homo thug movement is a fascinating topic. I dont think these paintings really address it (as his subjects are guys he asks off the street, and to my knowledge their sexuality is not part of the equation). I find his performances at Dietch amazing, I wish he would gravitate more towards that work. I'm all for more positive images of black men, but from a political standpoint these are not instigating great change (maybe a miniscule amount). I'm a big fan of KW but his paintings leave so much to be desired. Does making as many of these in as quik amount of time as possible contribute to the advancement of black men?(I actually wouldnt support the argument that they are greatly rushed) or do they end up as just commodity objects to be sold quickly?(not that there is anything wrong with making a commodity object). For fans of painting as an aestheic art these do come up short in my opinion.

i saw the piece at the brooklyn museum, and fucking loved it. looked at it for 10 minutes walked around and came back to see it again before i left. it made my day and inspired me. all this blog does is piss me off.you choose.